America's First Daughter: A Novel (47 page)

Truthfully, Tom had never been more justified in his rage, but there was no question that if the fire iron had hit Charles Bankhead squarely, he’d be dead. Dead on my father’s floor, at Monticello, where the eyes of the whole country seemed to look for example, especially now.

Because that summer, the United States of America declared war on Great Britain.

If we’d waited a little longer, we would’ve discovered the British had finally cracked under the weight of my father’s embargo. They’d decided against harassing our neutral merchant ships. They’d surrendered to my father’s policies. But as in the Revolutionary War, the British had come to their senses too late.

Now there would be blood.

And both my husband and my son were called to fight.

L
IKE MY FATHER,
I’d begun to count things for comfort.
Twenty-three
was the number of years I’d been married to Tom Randolph.
Nine
was the number of children we had, with another on the way.
Forty-four
was my husband’s age the day he declared that he must join the army because if he didn’t fight to defend America, he’d be unhappy for the rest of his life.

Tom wanted and expected my father’s blessing and encouragement, but Papa worried that my husband was beset with military fever. “His willingness to sacrifice for his country is admirable, but at his age, with all that depends on him—what can be driving him to it?”

I understood precisely what drove Tom. As my husband, he was doomed to live in the shadow of the country’s greatest living patriot. But a patriot who had never been a soldier. Strip even that away, and Tom was still haunted by the shadow of
his
father, the colonel. So it didn’t surprise me to see the pleasure Tom took in being commissioned by President Madison as a colonel, and given command of the Twentieth Regiment of the infantry.

Still, I couldn’t shake the sense that Tom still felt the pull of the grave. I’d kept him from dueling Randolph of Roanoke, but deep down, I feared that my husband was still looking for the bullet that would give him an honorable exit. The night he received his commission, he perched at the edge of our bed, holding papers duly signed and sworn.

“Martha, I want you to look at this.” I realized with a glance that it was a last will. Bringing both hands to my mouth, I pleaded with my eyes for him not to show me. But he persisted. “If I should die—”

“Please don’t,” I said, turning toward the wall. I knew Tom could die. Of course I knew. But I was my father’s daughter, so I didn’t wish to speak openly of such things. We didn’t acknowledge them this way. I wasn’t sure I could bear it.

“Martha.” Tom took me by the shoulders and drew me to face him. “If I should die, I intend to give you everything.”

Stunned, I asked, “What of the children?” It wasn’t done that widows were left with unfettered power over their husband’s property. It wasn’t done because a widow’s property would pass into the hands of a new husband the moment she remarried, and women weren’t thought to be capable of managing it.

Tom swallowed. “I recommend you sell Varina to pay off the debts. You should probably give Jeff the better part of Edgehill and divide the rest amongst the younger boys. But I leave it to your judgment, and to your use, as you think fit.”

I was dumbfounded, both by these spoken words, and the heartfelt ones he’d put to paper. “
I place my full confidence in the understanding, judgment, honor, and impartial maternal feeling of my beloved wife Martha.
”

God as my witness, every offense Tom had ever given melted away to nothing. This man had worked himself to the bone for me. For my father. For our children. This man had nearly killed to defend me. And he had, with what might be his last official act, placed the trust of everything into my hands. My eyes misted at the well of tender love I felt for him—the depths of which I hadn’t felt in some time. “Oh, Tom.”

He sat taller, bracing himself. “I’d only like to know if you think you might, in the event of my death . . .” He shook his head, clearly uncomfortable. “Would you seek another husband?”

I didn’t think. I only
felt
. Like my father before me, in that most vulnerable moment, when my spouse contemplated his death, I merely took my husband’s hand and vowed, “Only you, Tom. I swear by God that I’ll have no other husband.”

That was all I said on the subject until it came time for him to leave for an assault on a British-held fortress near the Saint Lawrence River. President Madison said we couldn’t forget the glory of our fathers in establishing independence, which must now be maintained by their sons.

The
fathers
he invoked were mine and John Adams. It was im portant to the cause—perhaps essential—that my husband and my son join the fight.

Jeff readily agreed. “God forbid that I should be last to come forward in defense of my country, for which I shall be proud to sacrifice my life.”

But for every proud smile and farewell kiss and bland pleasantry about how short this war was sure to be, how we’d repelled the British once and could do it again, I nursed unworthy thoughts I dared not give voice to.

I’m going to lose them, as I lose everything, to the cause of this country.

I’d lost my mother, my siblings, my childhood. I’d lost my first love and my financial future. And, now, pregnant again and half out of my mind with fear, I couldn’t bear to sacrifice another thing.

I’m not proud of it now. Nor was I then. But I went to my father and together we hatched a plot against my husband’s military career.

D
OLLEY FOLDED ME INTO HER ARMS
to welcome me to Montpelier. “Why, Patsy, I didn’t expect you in your condition. Then again, you’d never go anywhere if you waited until you weren’t with child.”

Papa chuckled. “At this rate, we ought to put her in a nunnery.”

It was an entertaining jest in spite, or because, of the fact that I’d once desired to be a nun. But such was my fear for my husband that I couldn’t find the heart to laugh. Papa gently squeezed my shoulder to reassure me of his intention to speak with Mr. Madison about my plight. It was left to me to prevail upon Madison’s wife.

All my life, I’d gotten by with smiles and pleasantries. But the moment the gentlemen were out of hearing, I wept into my kerchief. Dolley was so startled by my uncharacteristic outburst that she teared up herself. “Oh, my dear, whatever can be the matter?”

“I’m so low-spirited,” I wept, unbearably relieved to tell the truth. “I fear this baby is going to be the end of me and I’ll never see my husband again. One of us is going to die before we’re reunited.”

“You mustn’t think that way,” Dolley said, stroking my hair. “Why, you have a perfect constitution. You’re not due until the new year, and when the army retires to winter quarters, Tom will come home for the birth.”

“At a time like this, every able-bodied man must be called upon, but my father thinks perhaps Tom could serve in the Virginia militia, closer to home.” I held my breath in anticipation of her reaction, my stomach sick with worry and guilt.

For a long moment, Dolley was quiet. She should’ve told me that this was men’s business. She should’ve pretended not to have any sway. But she simply tapped her fan against her cheek until an idea came to her. “What the president needs is tax collectors. Wars need to be paid for, and when we don’t send men of prominence to collect, they’re just run out of town on a rail. Your husband, with his name and connections and service, why, he’d make an ideal choice.”

It was, in the end, my father’s private word with Madison that led to the appointment. But I played my part. Which is why I took the blame when, after helping to lead a successful attack on Fort Matilda in New York, my husband returned in November from winter camp to learn the president had appointed him to collect revenue.

Tom went from puffed up and proud of his successful military campaign, to slack-jawed and bewildered as he’d read the appointment orders. I sat watching him, my stomach in knots.

He didn’t talk to me for the rest of the day. But at bedtime, when his bewilderment gave way to fury, Tom entered our room and slammed the door. He paced and pulled at his hair, then turned to me and shouted, “What have you
done,
woman!”

Sitting on the bed’s edge, I fisted my hands in my skirt. “I merely explained—”

“I’m offered a commission on application of my
wife
?”

I fell silent, because I knew it would anger him, and yet, I’d done it anyway. Still, with my father’s encouragement, it’d seemed the right course.

Tom threw his sheathed sword across the room where it hit the cast iron stove with a clatter. “You and your father would have the president believing I want to hide behind a vile cloak of cowardice as a
tax
man?”

“Please don’t blame Papa! It was my doing.”

Tom squeezed his eyes shut with a shake of his head. “My confidence in myself has never been blind. I’ve scarcely in my life felt confident before. But on the battlefield, men looked to me. They trusted me. I didn’t let them down. Which made me trust
myself
. Never did I suppose you might undermine me this way! The whole world might go against me, but never
you
.”

“I’m not against you,” I cried. I hadn’t done it to undermine him, but to save him! Jeff was young and able-bodied, and if he didn’t serve it would bring shame upon the family.
But no one expects Tom to fight,
Papa had said. And so, as my husband stared at me, demanding an explanation, all I could think to say was, “The appointment pays four thousand dollars.”

I said it because I knew it grated on Tom that we lived in my father’s house. I knew it made him doubt his worth. This salary would ease that—that’s all I meant by it.

But he heard stark betrayal.

He grabbed me by the shoulders, and I yelped. Then he shook me. He shook me until my teeth rattled. He
hurt
me. Though I was heavily pregnant, he threw me to the floor, where I lay gasping as he stormed away.

It’d be years before the crack in our marriage became obvious to all, but I always knew it was that moment that shook our foundations. All our married lives, Tom had made a silent plea.
Need me.
Need me the way a woman is meant to need her husband.
I’d finally allowed myself to realize how
much
I needed him, and look what it had unleashed. For desperate need of him, I’d stolen his pride. And now I feared he’d never forgive me.

Tom didn’t sleep in our room that evening. I don’t know where he went. And when our baby girl was born that winter, he wouldn’t even suggest a name.
Seven,
I thought. Our seventh daughter. I named her Septimia.

Twenty-one
. That was another important number. That’s how old my tall, rock-steady son was on the summer day in 1814 that he was called into active duty in the militia to fend off invasion.

The last time the English attacked Virginia, my father had been pilloried for taking flight. Which meant that for my son, there was nothing to do
but
fight. And, in the end, all my schemes to keep Tom from the battlefield were for naught. As the summer days grew long, he prepared to command the Second Regiment of the Virginia Cavalry.

Before he departed Tom warned, “If the British win, it’ll be an end to this nation. We’ll likely be made colonies again. The English will consider your father a traitor and our entire family useful prisoners. So think of that before you say another word against my taking to the field.”

Ashamed, I said nothing. For the defense of our country—and our family—my husband would drill troops on the muddy, mosquito-ridden banks of the York River while my son joined a company of artillerists to fend off the invasion. Still smarting and betrayed, Tom gave me the coldest of farewells, and I was too afraid to press him for more.

But before they marched off, I held my son’s freckled face in my hands, memorizing every line. Jeff was as beautiful as his father had been at that age, but without the darkness. In temperament and strength, he was more like
my
father.

But where was I in that mix?